During most of the 20th century, railroads have been losing freight business to other forms of transportation such that some railway transport businesses have failed, thousands of miles of track abandoned, train car building curtailed and employment diminished. Efforts to retain or increase the volume of railway freight hauling include containerization, unit trains, trailer on flat car (TOFC or piggy-backing) and trailer trains, all of which are evident to the observer. While many of these efforts are considered advances in railway transport, the disadvantages associated with such efforts allow trucks with or without trailers to continue to erode railways' business by providing superior service.
Analysis of current and prior art railway systems reveals that a variety of problems including excessive handling of shipments results in one or more of the following: Delays, slowness and uncertainty; split responsibilities; untraceability of en route shipments; damage to cargo; difficulty of making claims; lack of door-door pickup and delivery by one carrier and on a timely basis; necessity for extra packaging of fragile items; difficulty of shipping items which must be heated, cooled or frozen; inability to accommodate short distance shipments economically; difficulty of servicing small towns or city suburbs directly; oftentimes requirements to couple and uncouple cars with resultant shunting and shock; and use of marshalling yards to"make up" trains by means of "humping", an extremely severe operation causing excessive shock to the cargo and equipment.
As further background, refer to U.S. Patent No. 2,304,418 issued to Murry entitled TRANSPORTATION EQUIPMENT, U.S. Pat. No. 2,950,690 issued to Bohlen entitled FREIGHT HANDLING SYSTEM, U.S. Pat. No. 3,232,242 issued to Krueger entitled SIDE TRANSFER FOR TRAILERS, U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,889 issued to Cox entitled RAILWAY TRANSPORT SYSTEM AND APPARATUS THEREFOR and U.S. Pat. No. 4,065,006 issued to Barry entitled CONTAINER SIDE-TRANSFER SYSTEM. Also refer to book entitled"INTEGRAL TRAIN SYSTEMS", by John G. Kneiling, and MECHANICAL ENGINEERING MAGAZINE, October '85 issue.
The disadvantages of the prior art railway systems in combination with the availability of a transportation system having its own rights-of-way unencumbered with unrelated traffic, created the interest in and is the reason for the present invention.